I was thinking of running a contest. First prize? You get to read one Snarf essay! Second prize? You get to read two Snarf essays!!!!
But some time ago, a person asked my why I didn't participate more in the threads that I started. Which, you know, VALID. But there was a reason for that. You see, I've been around a while. And there was a time when I did participate more in the discussions! Except... I began to notice something. A lot of the time I would see a comment, and I would have to respond to it ... because the person was making a point that was already addressed in the original post. So I'd quote the OP, which ... a little passive aggressive. Or someone would make a point that I fundamentally disagreed with, but that I had already addressed in the OP. This time, I am sure, I would get them to acknowledge the errors of their ways!
Yeah, no. Anyway, the point is that for the most part, I say what I have to say, and then let others carry on as they need to. If I didn't express myself well enough in my overly long essay that started it, I'm probably not going to improve things in the comments, am I? That said, I do always read the comments. First, because I do make sure to correct objective factual errors. This doesn't include typos- all my essays include typos because I do them in a single go, don't proofread, and my typos are the only way you know that I am not a Snarfbot that lives to anger your blood and troll bards. Second, because I genuinely enjoy the conversations and the fresh perspectives that are engendered by the essays. Third, and most importantly, I often find something in the comments that plants the seed of an idea that will sprout into the next overly long diatribe about something silly. And this? This is one of those times!
So I have the following comment from @Emerikol Please note that I am using this comment as a jumping off point for this thread, and I am thankful to Emerikol for posting it, and I think he is a thoughtful and knowledgable commenter and I genuinely enjoy my interactions with Emerikol. While I am going to use an offhand comment he made as the launching point for this thread, I appreciate his contributions!
This comment had me thinking about two things- the first, of course, is why Emerikol felt the need to push back on the idea of "skilled play" as metagaming. Because IMO, one of the common modes of play back then was skilled play (or "Gygaxian Skilled Play" - I'll explain later), and that was certainly metagaming as most people would understand it. But the second thing ... um, actually, there was no prohibition on using your science knowledge to invent gun powder. In fact ... there's some fun history to that!
But really, this got me to the bigger point that I've been pondering for a while. It's really two questions, and they both dovetail into a much larger issue that I've talked about before. Specifically, the use of jargon. I've written before about why I think jargon in the TTRPG field can be so .... frustrating.
And I think the issue with metagaming is twofold- first, that the term is now used as a pejorative. Metagaming is BAD, M'KAY. Second, that we don't have a clear definition of what constitution metagaming. One person's metagaming is another person's normal gaming. Now, if you're looking for definitive answers to these questions, I am not going to provide them here, because I can't. Definitions are socially constructed, and I am not the boss of you - YET. After all, WoTC keeps pumping out bard subclasses like they were AI models. But I do think it would be helpful to explore the topic of metagaming.
A. Gygaxian Skilled Play and Firearms
A long time ago, in a thread far, far away, I was in a conversation with someone where I was talking about "skilled play," as the term used for that common mode of play in the 1970s. This person, citing my prior objection to the use of loaded jargon to elevate certain playing styles over others, stated that it was unfair to call that method of play "skilled play" because that would imply that other methods were "unskilled." Which ... fair. For that reason, I try my best to refer to the common mode of play in the 1970s as "Gygaxian Skilled Play" or "GSP" so that it's clear I am referring to a specific method that came from a given time. It's a losing battle, but at least I'm not a part of the problem. I guess?
So what is GSP? Okay, so you know how sometimes there will be an old grognard, and they will be stroking their beard (they always have a beard), and they will say to you, "Back in the day, we didn't look at our character sheets for buttons to mash. We just used our awesome brains to imagine the solution before the kobold killed us with a feather pillow." It's that. There weren't skills, really (players of thieves are nodding sadly in agreement). Instead, you were expected to leverage your knowledge - your actual knowledge - to do well. You were not supposed to outright "cheat" by, say, reading a module before going through it. Everything else was fair game! One example of this was monsters- once you (as a player) encountered a monster, you were expected to remember that with different characters.
One of the problems with D&D is that the players always know too much. This is news? “You obtain surprise over three Clickclicks.” “Clickclicks? Oh, yeah, they’re in Supplement Three. Hand it to me. And where’s Greyhawk? It had a note about them.” A pause. “We shout out ‘November’.”
“That’s right, the Clickclicks fall over dead.”
Sound familiar?
Where is that from? The lament that players know too much about monsters? That would be Dragon Magazine, October ... 1977. In an article about creating random monsters to surprise the players. But look again at that- the players are literally looking at the rulebooks in order to verify their own knowledge about the creatures they are facing. You see this in a number of scenarios from the early days- the reliance on riddles. Or accounts of the early campaigns that went to Metamorphisis Alpha (a spaceship). Players were expected to use their actual knowledge- both of the world generally (the science that they knew, the riddles and general knowledge, and so on) as well as specifically (the rules and monsters that they had faced). Every thing from tournament play to Robilar single-handedly taking on Tomb of Horrors was a testament to player skill, or, as many would put it today- metagaming.
AHA! So if players could just use their actual knowledge, then why didn't the players just go all "Captain Kirk I come in Peace Mr. Gorn" and make their own firearms? Why weren't all the characters making their own firearms? About that ... see, here's the thing. They could, but they can't. Clear as an unmuddied stream, it is!
Look, most people know that gunpowder was included as a joke (along with MANY MANY MANY jokes) in the spell components table. Go on, look at fireball. But because players were expected to be able to use their own knowledge, gunpowder was explicitly banned in both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. That's right. I'll let you look it up- in both settings, gunpowder famously doesn't work. In Gygax's Greyhawk, we did have the famous example of Murlynd and his sixshooters- but the reason he was able to use them was because Murlynd's aura enabled the gunpowder to work. As a general rule, because of the GSP problem, early fantasy settings had a prohibition on gunpowder that was based on some sort of hand waving- the gods didn't like it, it became inert, it caught fire but didn't explode, etc. This long-standing practice was codified into the 1e DMG-
Unless you desire to have gunpowder muddying the waters in your fantasy world, it is strongly urged that BOOT HILL firearms be confined to specific areas, and when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk — ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it. Likewise, dynamite and similar explosives become inert. (p. 113)
Clever players could have created gunpowder-but it would have been inert. Special shout out, by the way, to Zelazny, who (AFAIK) introduced the idea of gunpowder being inert in some parts of the multiverse.
B. You called me a meta? TAKE THAT BACK!
Now, a bit of history, poorly remembered. Because I want to answer a question that has been bugging me for a while- why is metagaming a bad word? What's so bad about metagaming anyway? To understand this, I think it helps to briefly go through the use of the word "meta" as I remember it.
There was a time, a long long long time ago, when "meta" was incredibly uncommon. It was the sort of word that you'd only hear when incredibly pretentious people sat around and talked about Godel, Escher, Bach. They'd all be like, "Woah," and "Who will guard the guards," and "If I'm thinking about what I'm thinking, am I meta thinking?" and "Pass the bong." Point being, it was an elevated term used by people who otherwise would be proudly talking about how they don't own a television. It wasn't in common parlance. And then the term spread. Why? As always, you can blame popular culture and ... well, gaming culture.
The popular culture is easy. You had certain self-referential films by creatives like Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Synecdoche) that made the use of the term "meta" more common, and it began to seep into television as well (see, e.g., Community). But for our purposes given the TTRPG/D&D focus, the use of the term "metagame" in Magic: The Gathering to refer to selecting a deck based on your perception of what the other player will select was like rocketfuel for the term. Between that (especially) and the pop culture, we soon had the video gaming community using "the meta" to simply refer to the overall optimal strategies/items/characters/builds/etc. at a given time in games. Soon, "the meta" and "meta-" was everywhere.
And then, of course, came the metaverse and Facebook changing its name to meta. That happened in 2021. So to the extent that there was any good connotations left for meta, Zuckerberg killed it dead that year. Zuck, the extinguisher of joy. All of this is a long way of saying that the term went from niche to useful to overexposed to the name of one of the most hated companies in the world; it's hardly a surprise that metagaming doesn't fill us with warmth and cuddles.
C. Of all the imaginary friends I've had, I don't think there was one that I didn't end up having to kill.
The real issue with metagaming, like most jargon, is that there is no clear definition of what it means. And for that reason when we use it pejoratively we are just trying to tar play styles we do not like with a label. To illustrate this, imagine two very different games of D&D-
1. A game that was played with everyone using GSP.
2. A game that was played with everyone heavily into role-playing and borrowing narrative game elements.
Both tables would have chosen their style of play because they are, assumedly, having fun playing that way! And yet, table 2 would probably believe that table 1 is doing a lot of "metagaming" because they are using player skill that is independent of character knowledge. On the other hand, table 1 would believe that table 2 is playing badly and/or stupidly because they aren't using player skill, and, arguably, playing inconsistently (since it is nearly impossible to completely play without your own knowledge and skill). In my opinion, both arguments miss the point because the two tables are simply approaching the game differently, with different objectives to obtain their fun- and as such, "metagaming" is a useless term to even try and use.
This is the trouble when it comes to defining the term precisely. I've seen people define it incredibly narrowly so as to only include truly bad behavior such as a player reading the module/AP ahead of time. But most people would just call that "cheating," and we don't need a redundant term (meta-term!) for cheating, do we? On the other hand, almost any attempt I've seen to define it more expansively necessarily ends up including a lot of perfectly reasonable behavior. So as far as I am concerned, it's a fairly useless term. That said, I do use it occasionally, but the one rule I have is that when I use it, I don't use it pejoratively. For example, I think that GSP generally is more "metagamey" than we see in standard 5e play today, and ... that's okay. Because those are all valid styles of play.
So what do you think? Can you define metagame? Or do you just know it when you see it? Feel free to explain how I angered your blood in the comments!
But some time ago, a person asked my why I didn't participate more in the threads that I started. Which, you know, VALID. But there was a reason for that. You see, I've been around a while. And there was a time when I did participate more in the discussions! Except... I began to notice something. A lot of the time I would see a comment, and I would have to respond to it ... because the person was making a point that was already addressed in the original post. So I'd quote the OP, which ... a little passive aggressive. Or someone would make a point that I fundamentally disagreed with, but that I had already addressed in the OP. This time, I am sure, I would get them to acknowledge the errors of their ways!
Yeah, no. Anyway, the point is that for the most part, I say what I have to say, and then let others carry on as they need to. If I didn't express myself well enough in my overly long essay that started it, I'm probably not going to improve things in the comments, am I? That said, I do always read the comments. First, because I do make sure to correct objective factual errors. This doesn't include typos- all my essays include typos because I do them in a single go, don't proofread, and my typos are the only way you know that I am not a Snarfbot that lives to anger your blood and troll bards. Second, because I genuinely enjoy the conversations and the fresh perspectives that are engendered by the essays. Third, and most importantly, I often find something in the comments that plants the seed of an idea that will sprout into the next overly long diatribe about something silly. And this? This is one of those times!
So I have the following comment from @Emerikol Please note that I am using this comment as a jumping off point for this thread, and I am thankful to Emerikol for posting it, and I think he is a thoughtful and knowledgable commenter and I genuinely enjoy my interactions with Emerikol. While I am going to use an offhand comment he made as the launching point for this thread, I appreciate his contributions!
This comment had me thinking about two things- the first, of course, is why Emerikol felt the need to push back on the idea of "skilled play" as metagaming. Because IMO, one of the common modes of play back then was skilled play (or "Gygaxian Skilled Play" - I'll explain later), and that was certainly metagaming as most people would understand it. But the second thing ... um, actually, there was no prohibition on using your science knowledge to invent gun powder. In fact ... there's some fun history to that!
But really, this got me to the bigger point that I've been pondering for a while. It's really two questions, and they both dovetail into a much larger issue that I've talked about before. Specifically, the use of jargon. I've written before about why I think jargon in the TTRPG field can be so .... frustrating.
And I think the issue with metagaming is twofold- first, that the term is now used as a pejorative. Metagaming is BAD, M'KAY. Second, that we don't have a clear definition of what constitution metagaming. One person's metagaming is another person's normal gaming. Now, if you're looking for definitive answers to these questions, I am not going to provide them here, because I can't. Definitions are socially constructed, and I am not the boss of you - YET. After all, WoTC keeps pumping out bard subclasses like they were AI models. But I do think it would be helpful to explore the topic of metagaming.
A. Gygaxian Skilled Play and Firearms
A long time ago, in a thread far, far away, I was in a conversation with someone where I was talking about "skilled play," as the term used for that common mode of play in the 1970s. This person, citing my prior objection to the use of loaded jargon to elevate certain playing styles over others, stated that it was unfair to call that method of play "skilled play" because that would imply that other methods were "unskilled." Which ... fair. For that reason, I try my best to refer to the common mode of play in the 1970s as "Gygaxian Skilled Play" or "GSP" so that it's clear I am referring to a specific method that came from a given time. It's a losing battle, but at least I'm not a part of the problem. I guess?
So what is GSP? Okay, so you know how sometimes there will be an old grognard, and they will be stroking their beard (they always have a beard), and they will say to you, "Back in the day, we didn't look at our character sheets for buttons to mash. We just used our awesome brains to imagine the solution before the kobold killed us with a feather pillow." It's that. There weren't skills, really (players of thieves are nodding sadly in agreement). Instead, you were expected to leverage your knowledge - your actual knowledge - to do well. You were not supposed to outright "cheat" by, say, reading a module before going through it. Everything else was fair game! One example of this was monsters- once you (as a player) encountered a monster, you were expected to remember that with different characters.
One of the problems with D&D is that the players always know too much. This is news? “You obtain surprise over three Clickclicks.” “Clickclicks? Oh, yeah, they’re in Supplement Three. Hand it to me. And where’s Greyhawk? It had a note about them.” A pause. “We shout out ‘November’.”
“That’s right, the Clickclicks fall over dead.”
Sound familiar?
Where is that from? The lament that players know too much about monsters? That would be Dragon Magazine, October ... 1977. In an article about creating random monsters to surprise the players. But look again at that- the players are literally looking at the rulebooks in order to verify their own knowledge about the creatures they are facing. You see this in a number of scenarios from the early days- the reliance on riddles. Or accounts of the early campaigns that went to Metamorphisis Alpha (a spaceship). Players were expected to use their actual knowledge- both of the world generally (the science that they knew, the riddles and general knowledge, and so on) as well as specifically (the rules and monsters that they had faced). Every thing from tournament play to Robilar single-handedly taking on Tomb of Horrors was a testament to player skill, or, as many would put it today- metagaming.
AHA! So if players could just use their actual knowledge, then why didn't the players just go all "Captain Kirk I come in Peace Mr. Gorn" and make their own firearms? Why weren't all the characters making their own firearms? About that ... see, here's the thing. They could, but they can't. Clear as an unmuddied stream, it is!
Look, most people know that gunpowder was included as a joke (along with MANY MANY MANY jokes) in the spell components table. Go on, look at fireball. But because players were expected to be able to use their own knowledge, gunpowder was explicitly banned in both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. That's right. I'll let you look it up- in both settings, gunpowder famously doesn't work. In Gygax's Greyhawk, we did have the famous example of Murlynd and his sixshooters- but the reason he was able to use them was because Murlynd's aura enabled the gunpowder to work. As a general rule, because of the GSP problem, early fantasy settings had a prohibition on gunpowder that was based on some sort of hand waving- the gods didn't like it, it became inert, it caught fire but didn't explode, etc. This long-standing practice was codified into the 1e DMG-
Unless you desire to have gunpowder muddying the waters in your fantasy world, it is strongly urged that BOOT HILL firearms be confined to specific areas, and when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk — ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it. Likewise, dynamite and similar explosives become inert. (p. 113)
Clever players could have created gunpowder-but it would have been inert. Special shout out, by the way, to Zelazny, who (AFAIK) introduced the idea of gunpowder being inert in some parts of the multiverse.
B. You called me a meta? TAKE THAT BACK!
Now, a bit of history, poorly remembered. Because I want to answer a question that has been bugging me for a while- why is metagaming a bad word? What's so bad about metagaming anyway? To understand this, I think it helps to briefly go through the use of the word "meta" as I remember it.
There was a time, a long long long time ago, when "meta" was incredibly uncommon. It was the sort of word that you'd only hear when incredibly pretentious people sat around and talked about Godel, Escher, Bach. They'd all be like, "Woah," and "Who will guard the guards," and "If I'm thinking about what I'm thinking, am I meta thinking?" and "Pass the bong." Point being, it was an elevated term used by people who otherwise would be proudly talking about how they don't own a television. It wasn't in common parlance. And then the term spread. Why? As always, you can blame popular culture and ... well, gaming culture.
The popular culture is easy. You had certain self-referential films by creatives like Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Synecdoche) that made the use of the term "meta" more common, and it began to seep into television as well (see, e.g., Community). But for our purposes given the TTRPG/D&D focus, the use of the term "metagame" in Magic: The Gathering to refer to selecting a deck based on your perception of what the other player will select was like rocketfuel for the term. Between that (especially) and the pop culture, we soon had the video gaming community using "the meta" to simply refer to the overall optimal strategies/items/characters/builds/etc. at a given time in games. Soon, "the meta" and "meta-" was everywhere.
And then, of course, came the metaverse and Facebook changing its name to meta. That happened in 2021. So to the extent that there was any good connotations left for meta, Zuckerberg killed it dead that year. Zuck, the extinguisher of joy. All of this is a long way of saying that the term went from niche to useful to overexposed to the name of one of the most hated companies in the world; it's hardly a surprise that metagaming doesn't fill us with warmth and cuddles.
C. Of all the imaginary friends I've had, I don't think there was one that I didn't end up having to kill.
The real issue with metagaming, like most jargon, is that there is no clear definition of what it means. And for that reason when we use it pejoratively we are just trying to tar play styles we do not like with a label. To illustrate this, imagine two very different games of D&D-
1. A game that was played with everyone using GSP.
2. A game that was played with everyone heavily into role-playing and borrowing narrative game elements.
Both tables would have chosen their style of play because they are, assumedly, having fun playing that way! And yet, table 2 would probably believe that table 1 is doing a lot of "metagaming" because they are using player skill that is independent of character knowledge. On the other hand, table 1 would believe that table 2 is playing badly and/or stupidly because they aren't using player skill, and, arguably, playing inconsistently (since it is nearly impossible to completely play without your own knowledge and skill). In my opinion, both arguments miss the point because the two tables are simply approaching the game differently, with different objectives to obtain their fun- and as such, "metagaming" is a useless term to even try and use.
This is the trouble when it comes to defining the term precisely. I've seen people define it incredibly narrowly so as to only include truly bad behavior such as a player reading the module/AP ahead of time. But most people would just call that "cheating," and we don't need a redundant term (meta-term!) for cheating, do we? On the other hand, almost any attempt I've seen to define it more expansively necessarily ends up including a lot of perfectly reasonable behavior. So as far as I am concerned, it's a fairly useless term. That said, I do use it occasionally, but the one rule I have is that when I use it, I don't use it pejoratively. For example, I think that GSP generally is more "metagamey" than we see in standard 5e play today, and ... that's okay. Because those are all valid styles of play.
So what do you think? Can you define metagame? Or do you just know it when you see it? Feel free to explain how I angered your blood in the comments!
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